Star Wars: The Old Republic

[Anubis]

Some information regarding release date from Eric Brown, the CFO of EA.

http://darthhater.com/2011/03/15/releas ... -july-1st/

Can't see it being anywhere but September - December really. Been expecting it then for ages, but it is good to have some more solid information so thanks for the link Ash

May I take it by your involvement here that you'll be playing with us when the time comes?

[Ash]

All I can say at this moment is yes, will be good to play with the old NC/WOW crowd.

Things may change by the time release comes, but if it was tommorrow then the answer would be yes,
as I know if a lifetime sub is available I'll probably spring for it.

[M.Steiner]

I've never bought a lifetime sub for an MMO before but if they decide to offer one for this I'd definitely consider it. Can't see myself quitting any time soon so would save lots in the long run.
If they do it'll probably be a limited time offer I would imagine and 11140-150 sounds about right. When a WoW sub cost over 1190 a year (more if you don't go for 6month) I'd have no issues paying something like that.

[Cyma]

The lifetime thing definitly sound interesting but the only thing that i am afraid is thinking of so many mmorpg have close/shutdown after 2 years or less.

Though I wil be deifnitly playing that baby a way or an other! muhahaha

[BlackDove]

I'll probably get the first three months, and then if I see myself playing, consider the lifetime.

[Ash]

Jedi Armour Progression posted today

http://www.swtor.com/news/news-article/20110325

I've been catching some of the Fan interviews surfacing from PAX East,
and I must say that which ever way we go there are definitely a couple of classes
I would like to get my teeth into.
And I have a feeling that I would end up rolling alts on the otherside just to experience
the various stories and flashpoints.

[Ash]

Darth Hater have some information from the recent Fan Site Fest held at Bioware Austin.

http://darthhater.com/2011/04/28/fan-si ... s-learned/

http://darthhater.com/2011/04/28/fan-si ... pressions/

http://darthhater.com/2011/04/28/fan-si ... pressions/

http://darthhater.com/2011/04/28/fan-si ... pressions/

http://darthhater.com/2011/04/28/fan-si ... ion-audio/

Enjoy

[M.Steiner]

Awesome, cheers for posting those.
I linked this on IRC yesterday too but I dunno if anyone clicked it - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/28/58119/


/me goes to read!

[enlightened]

Wow this is getting more interesting Sadly i'm not going to be thinking about playing games for a while. Have to study for my LSAT and what not

[Anubis]

Just read this on the TOR forums from 2010:

Seal Dahlberg

We haven't finished all of our architecture yet, and Gordon or someone else would probably know a little bit more about this than I. My understanding is that we will have servers in all of the territories we're going to launch, just because of the bandwidth issues, not even bandwidth but lag, you know. If I'm someone playing in Germany and I have to play all the way on a US server the lag is going to be a lot more substantial then if I have a server in my backyard. That said, I don't know if we're actually restricting people. You know, so if I'm in Germany and I want to play with friends in the US I believe we're going to allow that. The choice would be up to you.

That's actually one of the nice things about us doing everything ourselves. Many MMOs have different publishers doing different territories. They sort of have to split up servers just because of that alone. So, we're still working on it, no promises, but I believe that's the route we're going.

Obviously very good news for us if this stays true. Lets hope it does, then we only need to agree on whether we go on an EU or US server! I certainly wouldn't mind playing on a US one and putting up with a bit of lag if it meant we all got to play together

[Ash]

Anny, surprised you didn't mention the Sith Inquisitor Class Video.

[Anubis]

Anny, surprised you didn't mention the Sith Inquisitor Class Video.

Still not sure whether I'll be going Inquisitor or not yet

[Chimera]

I wouldn't mind playing on an EU server either. Chicks with accents are hawt. Chicks with accents and tentacles on their heads are even hawter.

[Ash]

Ok with E3 upon us the third CGI trailer has been released.
The following page has all three in order, also I believe this latest one will actually be the game intro movie.

http://www.swtor.com/info/story/setting

Enjoy

[Anubis]

A few comments in the E3 thread for those who have not seen.

Suffice to say I was highly impressed - probably their best trailer yet I would say

[M.Steiner]

I just happened to be watching a video showing off the gaming peripherals which Razer are releasing for TOR and noticed something interesting. I'm not the only one who spotted it looking at the comments but thought I'd post it here....

Now this is only going off of this guys wording so it's not exactly solid but at the beginning of said video the Razer dude states that the products they're releasing will be "coming out with the game later this year hopefully". Then at the end of the vid he says that they are "coming out hopefully November".
He does say "hopefully" and maybe he's just guessing but considering he's their product marketing manager and they're working with BioWare & LucasArts I would think he'll have some idea of when they're stuff is likely to be released. Possible release date slip up if they're coming out with the game? Just in time for Christmas!
Then again it could be rubbish lol. Time will tell

[enlightened]

Hehe nice catch MS

[Scorpius]

Here's a linkie to erm leaked screenshots and other stuff.
http://betacake.blogspot.com/

[M.Steiner]

Btw since we were discussing it yesterday on IRC. All 3 versions of the game (Collector's, Digital Deluxe, Standard) are going to come with 30 free days of game time. From then on we'll have to pay for a subscription as expected.

Also confirmation for anyone still wondering. I don't think we really needed it since they have been allowing people to join whichever guild they want regardless of region but here we are;

Q: I live in North America but my friend lives in Europe. Will we be able to play together on the same server?
A: Yes, it will be possible to play on the same server as your friends. Any player of Star Wars: The Old Republic can choose to play on any server. However, if you choose to play on a server outside of your own region (i.e., 111 playing on European servers from North America, and vice versa), because of natural latency caused by the distance between your client and the game servers, you may find your game performance is impacted.

Nice to see it in writing. Fantastic news for us as this doesn't happen very often.

It seems the leaked collector's edition image was right on too.
Pre-order page
Pre-order FAQ

Get pre-ordering people!. Not sure when Phase 3 of the pre-launch guild program will start but at least 4 of us need to have ordered a copy and redeemed our pre-order codes at the Code Redemption page either before or during that phase. So might as well get started now . I've just pre-ordered my CE.
I smell a release date coming....

[Anubis]

I'll pre-order nearer the time. Nice to know that we're getting closer to launch though.

Fantastic news re: non-restricted servers. Will be great for us to all play together for the first time in ages Now if they'd only release payment information!

[Ash]

I've preordered also, just the standard edition though,
I'm hoping they may have a limited lifetime sub offer for Preorders closer to release.

[Whizbang]

Pre-order is in and have already received my code so I'm all set and ready to roll.

[Ash]

Just noticed on the SWTOR site that the EA Origin site has already sold out of the Digital Download Collectors Edition.

[Anubis]

They must have only put up a very limited number if that's the case

[M.Steiner]

Yep. As I say, get your pre-orders in. [Edited - Don't take this as fact. Depending on shop you may NOT be able to cancel once you have received your pre-order code. See my post on the next page]
They are purposely limiting both the availability of game copies (even digital as seen) for launch and territories in which people can pre-order the game. More supplies & regions will open up after launch. It's a sort of.. staggered release in a way. Helps to make sure that the games launch is as smooth as possible and then start to let more people in from there. I know a couple of you here have become less interested recently but TOR is likely to be the biggest MMO launch since WoW. They'll be trying to counter severs going down from having more players than they may have originally anticipated and the lag and queues because of that I would imagine. Good idea imo.

Makes sense to pre-order now rather than leaving it until later especially if any of you are considering a boxed CE. Digital Deluxe copies are already gone as you've all seen. I don't know about other US shops but here in the UK if you pre-order with GAME or Amazon online you won't pay a penny until release, you should be able to cancel anytime before they start preparing your copy for dispatch and if the price goes down at any point between the time you order and the time it is released (even if it drops in price for just a few hours or a day) you'll get charged that new lower price come launch.
Just a warning for those of you thinking about ordering nearer to release like Anny here. There's really no reason NOT to pre-order now when you can cancel anytime and not pay anything, just to make sure you secure yourself a copy for release. Don't think that the standard editions won't sell out too because they will. (Amazon US have now sold out of the collectors editions).

[Edit]

When pre-orders went up this morning for Star Wars: The Old Republic, something odd happened. Origin was saying something about 111limited quantities111 and whatever, leading us to be angry and whatever because we thought EA was just being needlessly stingy.

But it turns out that quantities are limited for a reason, as we learned at SWTOR111s Comic-Con panel today, and that reason is that BioWare is going to launch SWTOR with a limited number of players rather than have millions of folks dive in all at once when they go online this winter. One can see the wisdom of such a tactic.

So if you don111t manage to land a pre-order today, be sad but don111t worry, because you will eventually get to play the game. Eventually.

Don't risk leaving it. You were warned

Also for anyone who has or will be ordering with GAME, they'll be sending the pre-order codes (which give us early access) out next thursday apparently. I'm a little worried as the wording on the site does state that the order in which they'll give early access is the order of people entering their codes but this info seems a bit conflicting as I've also read that the standard & digital deluxe editions will give a 3 day head start and the collector's edition 7. So not sure which is true. Or maybe the first come first serve of the early access will just mean they'll be sending emails out in waves on those particular days in the order of people registering their codes.. As long as it's the same day it's no biggie. I'll be angry if I don't get the same amount of days to the early access after buying a CE just because GAME are sending the codes later than Origin's which are instant. Hopefully they will make this clearer.

4 of us (Ash, Mech, Ava and myself) have pre-ordered now so once we've all received and entered our codes our Sith guild has already met the pre-order requirement and before Phase3 too!. Piece of cake